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View all search resultsThe great walls of green
Vertical gardens are stealing the attention of young people who are concerned with global warming issues and want to get their hands dirty to protect the future
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Vertical gardens are stealing the attention of young people who are concerned with global warming issues and want to get their hands dirty to protect the future.
Some time ago, serious students of classical history learned of the Seven Wonders of the World. They included the Hanging Gardens of Babylon, which supposedly existed in the Eastern Mediterranean around 200 BC, but were destroyed three centuries later.
Nothing remains. Artists later let their imaginations loose, but the marvel remained a mystery. How was it done?
Zip forward two millennia to when US architect and academic Stanley White patented his 'vegetation-bearing architectonic structure and system'. Fortunately, a copy editor reduced it to 'botanical bricks'.
Look closer: Vertical gardens in Indonesia are generally symmetrical
These were described as 'plant units capable of being built up to any height, for quick landscape effects, the vertical surfaces covered with flowering vines, or the like.'
That was in 1938, not a time for inventing anything that didn't explode or fire projectiles, so the idea lay dormant. Now, its slumber is over, and green walls or vertical gardens ' also known as living walls ' have become a new architectural statement for prestigious buildings, or to cover mistakes.
Jakarta and Surabaya in East Java have followed the trend of making vertical gardens, but in Asia, Singapore is the leader. Changi Airport has some spectacular examples and even normally austere government offices have been given a soft green edge.
In Malang, East Java, authorities at Brawijaya University wanted to screen a roadside rubbish dump, so they turned to horticulture lecturer Medha Baskara. The man who was raised close to nature studied the work of French botanist and ecological engineer Patrick Blanc in Holland and France.
Blanc, which curiously translates as 'white', is credited with reviving and expanding White's ideas.
Going up: Medha Baskara talks about vertical gardens.
'The green walls at the Musee du Quai Branly in Paris are stunning and exciting. Blanc calls his creations 'vertical gardens' and there's one at a resort in Bali,' Baskara said.
He believed a green wall could beautify the campus while at the same time create projects for the students and promote the concept.
The result was a 27-meter-long curved metal frame, three meters high and clad with a hanging carpet of glass wool, the insulation also used in motorcycle riders' jackets. Twenty different types of plants have been pushed into slits in the material.
Bamboo plant holders
Selection is important ' if one variety blooms early or late, the effect can be spoiled. Likewise with positioning, as sun-shy plants will perish with no shade.
An automatic pump system runs for one minute every hour delivering water through a pipe on the frame top. The water, which includes nutrients, drips down and irrigates the plants.
Unlike traditional botanical gardens where admirers have to keep back lest they trample the flower beds, green walls let visitors get close, while for workers, an extra advantage is standing or sitting to prune.
'In Europe, green wall designs try to create a wild, irregular jungle feel. However Indonesians prefer symmetry,' Baskara said of the design.
Maintenance can be low if tanks, timers and pumps are used, but the capital investment is higher ' it cost the university Rp 2.5 million (US$183) per square meter to build and equip its wall.
Some systems use pots suspended on a wire frame. Others adapt PVC gutters or drainage pipes with holes or slots for the plants. Plastic drink bottles hung horizontally can also be effective. The only limits are those imposed by a lack of creativity. The challenge is to make green walls accessible to all using low-cost or recycled materials, not just for big business projects.
Ideas like vertical gardens are giving horticulture and agriculture courses a new status on campus, Baskara says.
'In the past, medicine and law, business and management were the key disciplines. Now students concerned about global warming and conservation are turning to botany and what they can do to protect the future,' he said.
One of Baskara's graduates, Dias Anggarsari, 23, who has spent time up a ladder helping build the green wall, is now employed by the local administration to maintain Malang's parks and fill them with plants.
The office she shares with her colleagues faces a vertical garden.
'It's a marvellous job,' she said, 'This is what I wanted ' to work with nature and do something that adds beauty.'
' Photos by Erlinawati Graham
